Revna sighed. “The point is, if you had let me try to take her, I would’ve talked to her first.”

“The chances of her going willingly are very low.”

“I wouldn’t have told her everything, of course,” Revna continued. “Just a little about the land where we’re from. Where she’s from.”

Avery snorted, crawling to their feet. “I don’t think she’ll remember.”

“She might,” Revna insisted. She pulled Avery to their feet. “Come on. Let’s go track her down.”

Mazel ran. She had never been much of a runner, really, but currently, the adrenaline flooding through her veins was enough to shock a man back to life. If that was actually how adrenaline worked. She couldn’t remember. After all, she was sprinting as hard as she ever had in her life.

Away from that freak.

The freak that you shot, her mind reminded her.

Shut up, she snapped back.

She was busy running for her life.

Finally, a few blocks away, she stopped, hands on her knees, panting. Her breath fogged in the air, and frost burned her lungs. She glanced behind her. Not a person in sight. Not surprising, considering it was around four in the night.

The streetlamp next to her flickered. Mazel glanced up. It was a raven. A beady-eyed raven that seemed to be staring right at her. She swallowed. Peered over her shoulder again. She nearly jumped out of her own skin at the flapping of wings.

“Hello.”

Mazel shrieked. She slammed her hand behind her, blindly trying to hit the producer of the noise. Her fist connected with something hard, and she heard a yelp. She prepared to run again when something tackled her to the ground. She opened her mouth to scream, but a hand was slapped over her mouth.

Someone was straddling her, pinning her to the ground. Mazel struggled, but they were a lot heavier.

“Can you just let me try my way?” a voice groaned from somewhere to the right. Mazel tried to look over. She only saw the shadows of someone—a girl—standing over the two of them.

“If I had, she would’ve gotten away, wouldn’t she?” the person straddling Mazel snapped back. The girl shot back something else, but Mazel was too busy reaching for her gun to hear.

“Nu-uh, none of that!” Quicker than a bullet, the gun was snatched out of her hand. It landed somewhere above Mazel’s head with a clatter. A face peered over her. It was the same person as earlier, with those blue eyes framed by yellow circles. Short brown hair framed a face with a sharp nose, cheekbones scattered with freckles, and thin lips that were currently stretched into a frown.

“So this is who we’ve been sent to the Surface for, huh? Not much, is she?”

“Oh, please, she escaped from you twice!”